A MAN will face trial for allegedly setting up a website called “Radio Aryan” to distribute racist and anti-Semitic podcasts.
James Allchurch, 49, is accused of regularly uploading banned content to the site claiming that black and white people in Britain are in a state of race war.
He also posted material perpetrating racist tropes against Jewish people, it is claimed.
Allchurch, of no fixed address but originally from Pembrokeshire, appeared at Haverfordwest Magistrates’ Court dressed in a white hazmat suit, visor, face mask and sunglasses.
He asked to be referred to by the name “Sven Longshanks”.
The defendant denied 15 counts of distributing a sound recording stirring up racial hatred under section 21.1 of the Public Order Act 1986 on or before November 2019.
The court heard that Radio Aryan had been in operation since 2015 and 12 of the charges relate to material allegedly offensive to people from black or ethnic minority communities.
The remaining three relate to podcasts said to be anti-Semitic.
When asked by Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram why he wished to change his name, Allchurch said: “This is my life’s work that is on trial and that’s the name that my work is published under.”
Kevin Smallcombe, for Allchurch, said the issues in the case would be “academic research, freedom of speech and journalism”.
Judge Ikram sent the case to Swansea Crown Court on September 15 for a plea and trial preparation hearing.
Allchurch was granted unconditional bail until that date.
This article originally appeared on our sister site The National.
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